Your job is to choose Secondary Button from the pop-up menu that identifies the right side of the mouse. (There’s a picture on The Mighty Mouse and Magic Mouse.) There, in all its splendor, is a diagram of the mouse. Or is it a sculpted, winglike, wireless mouse with a wide top surface? That would be the newer Magic Mouse.īoth of them have a secret: an invisible right mouse button.
Is your mouse a white shiny plastic capsule with tiny gray scrolling track-pea on the far end? That would be what Apple calls the Mighty Mouse. Recycle the one from your old PC, if you like.įurthermore, if you’ve bought a desktop Mac since late 2005, you probably already have a two-button mouse-but you might not realize it. “Their refusal to get rid of their stupid one-button mouse!”įirst of all, you can attach any old $6 USB two-button mouse to the Mac, and it’ll work flawlessly. “Ah, but that’s what’s always driven me nuts about Apple,” goes the common refrain. That is, clicking something by pressing the right mouse button on a two-button mouse.
Windows veterans have always used the one-handed method: right-clicking. That is, while pressing the Control key (bottom row), click the mouse on your target. You can open the shortcut menu of something on the Mac screen by Control-clicking it. It makes plain the most important and dramatic differences between the Windows method and the Macintosh way.Ĭontrol-click. To minimize the frustration, therefore, read this chapter first. For the first few days or weeks, you may instinctively reach for certain familiar features that simply aren’t where you expect to find them, the way your tongue keeps sticking itself into the socket of a newly extracted tooth. As you could have predicted, this rearrangement of features can mean a good deal of confusion for you, the Macintosh foreigner. The bad news is that these features are called different things and parked in different spots.
In other words, Mac OS X offers roughly the same features as recent versions of Windows. It must somehow represent your files and programs on the screen so you can open them offer some method of organizing your files present onscreen controls that affect your speaker volume, mouse speed, and so on and communicate with your external gadgets, like disks, printers, and digital cameras. Whether it’s Mac OS X, Windows Vista, or Billy Bob’s System-Software Special, any OS must serve as the ambassador between the computer and you, its human operator. Mac OS X 1.When you get right down to it, the job description of every operating system is pretty much the same.OS X Snow Leopard Accessibility: Physical and Motor Skills.To read more about Sticky Keys for OS X, click on the following links: If the options to enable or disable Sticky Keys via the shift key was checked, pressing the shift key five times will also turn off Sticky Keys. To turn off Sticky Keys, check the Off radio button in the Sticky Keys section of the Universal Access system preferences. If the option to Show Universal Access status in the menu bar is enabled in the Universal Access system preferences, a marquee will appear next to the Universal Access icon in the menu bar stating that Sticky keys is on (Figure 2).įigure 2. Further, an overlay icon will be shown for each modifier key that is pressed.
How To Know That Sticky Keys is Workingīy default, OS X will play a sound when enabling or disabling Sticky Keys and when a modifier key is pressed. Check the On radio button (circled above) to enable Sticky Keys. This will allow you to enable or disable Sticky Keys using the shift key rather than via system preferences.įigure 1.
If desired, check the box labeled Press the Shift key five times to turn Sticky Keys on or off. (Alternatively, click on the System Preferences icon in the dock.)Ĭheck the radio button labeled On in the Sticky Keys section (Figure 1). Turning On Sticky Keysīy default, Sticky Keys may be turned on in the Universal Access panel of System Preferences:Ĭhose Apple menu > System Preferences, and click Universal Access. This will benefit users who are unable to press or have difficulty pressing shortcut key combinations.
Mac OS X Snow Leopard Sticky Keys enables the user to enter key combinations by pressing keys in sequence rather than simultaneously.